Year in review

Well, its certainly been a long time since my last post. I'm really not that good at this blogging thing. At least not doing it regularly at all. But I figure I should give a bit of an update on my life. Since my last post in May, I've continued to work on my thesis, cooked lots of tasty food, and traveled to Egypt and the US. I've got some pictures of the Egypt trip available on my photobucket account. I'll try to post here more often, but with my thesis coming down to the wire, I'm going to be a bit pressed for time.

Grants and Funding

So, after all the long waiting and hoping I've got some grant money, courtesy EQC. And its being funneled through the IESE, which means that I might be moving office again. In order to provide me with more supervision and some better mentoring, and to help springboard their Engineering Geology/Geotechnics branch, I'll be moving to IESE new offices in mid-late June. I'll take it, if it means getting out of this freezing building before we get to far into winter. It really is a good opportunity for me as well. I'll get to be in close proximity to more people who will care about my research. Ever since the only engineering geologist lecturer here went onto retirement/contract, I've felt pretty lonely (intellectually speaking). Most of the other people in the department are busy researching things related to geochemistry and petrology or paleontology. I just don't share as much in common with that sort.

Anyways, also less than 72 hours from being back home in sunny Colorado. Both Crystal and I are looking forward to our little break. Fortunately, I've gotten my lab work to a good point before I head home. I may have some writting to do while I'm there as well. It'll be good for me to get at least some work done during the three weeks I'm away. I keep thinking about my timeline back home, and the thought that the time will be nice, but not nearly enough keeps coming up. I guess I should enjoy the opportunity while I can.

I have a lot of movies to see while I'm at home and the prices are more reasonible. The much higher cost of living is probably the biggest turn of of NZ for me. The people, environment, and setting are all great. I love the geology here, especially because I feel like people researching here actually have a chance to find something that's really new and could actually impact the country as a whole. I just don't think I could have that feeling working back home. All of the geology in Colorado seems to be so well understood. Maybe its just cause I'm doing my research here that I feel that way.

This post has dragged on a lot longer that I had originally intended, but at least that gives everyone a fair update to what's going on. To those of my family and friends living in Colorado, I look forward to seeing you soon.

Return to New Zealand

Well, I certainly haven't posted for awhile. I've been quite busy, and the shear number of things that I need to report make it difficult to put them all in one post. I'll just have to summarize. In early December I went home to visit my family for the holidays. Colorado was completely dumped on by several snow storms. on January 13, Crystal and I were married. I changed my airline ticket around to stay for another month with her. I moved back to Auckland at the end of February. Crystal followed in late March, and we are now living together happily. I hope to keep updates more frequent in the future. I'd like to start podcasting again, but the "day in the life" format doesn't seem to be working for me. This is hard cause I'm a really big fan of a lot of programs that promote that sort of journalism (ie "This American Life" from NPR, check it out). But I think that the life of a PhD student might lack a certain amount of interest required for that sort of a podcast. I may instead look at making a short weekly cast of my thoughts on the current games that I'm playing. Basically an audio form of the Slaved Articles that I should be posting on the Gameslave. I really need to get back to posting those.

Also, I hope to put some pictures up eventually, but I'm feeling pretty lazy right now.